If You Only Take One Supplement This Summer, Let It Be This

The entrepreneur Ara Katz would like to clear a few things up. All probiotics are not created equal, and some products touting “probiotic” labels aren’t probiotics at all. Katz is seated at the whitewashed Venice headquarters of her latest venture, Seed, an innovative consumer-health company focused on the microbiome that is poised to shake up the wellness industry when it launches its own novel take on the supplement—one based on hard science and developed by the leading minds in the field—next week.

“Probiotic popcorn and probiotic chocolate . . . people claim that every single food they grow bacteria in is somehow a probiotic,” Katz continues. “A few may [be], but in order to be a probiotic, a live microbe must be studied and shown to have health benefits.” Disturbed by the amount of misinformation and gimmickry surrounding the wildly popular category of probiotic health supplements, which is projected to exceed $64 billion by 2023, she has been on a mission to cut through the proverbial “well-washing” since 2016.

That’s when Katz, a successful fashion entrepreneur who holds advising roles for powerhouse brands from Violet Grey to Tamara Mellon, and launched companies such as the revolutionary but now defunct e-commerce group BeachMint (of StyleMint fame) and the LVMH-backed shopping start-up Spring, found herself unexpectedly plunged headlong into the business of probiotics. Not long after giving birth to her son Pax, she recalls, she started to have trouble creating enough breast milk. Like many new mothers, she considered formula, which led her to research what exactly an infant needs for proper development, which eventually landed her on the human microbiome. “The way that women end up learning about their body is through pathology or pregnancy,” she says, shaking her head at the delayed process of self-discovery.

Soon, Katz had teamed up with microbiome expert Raja Dhir to create one straightforward and scientifically sound pill that would combine the best of probiotics and prebiotics (a combination formally known as a synbiotic). For the task, they also enlisted chief scientist Dr. Gregor Reid, coauthor of the scientific definition of probiotics for the U.N. and World Health Organization in 2001.

“We are only half human,” insists Katz, whose hip-grazing waves, makeup-free razor-sharp jawline, and sea-glass green eyes are argument enough for taking care of our other halves—the approximately 38 trillion microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, and fungi) taking residence on and inside us at any given moment. Seed’s Daily Synbiotic for women includes 24 potent strains of bacteria that have been clinically proven to not only ease digestion and significantly increase folate production, but to also contribute to cardiovascular health and improve dermatological health. There is an accompanying male-focused formula as well, and both are painstakingly formulated with plant-based prebiotic compounds from sources rich in probiotic-feeding polyphenols including Indian pomegranate, which is capable of converting to cell-cleansing and muscle-recovery assisting urolithin A. “We took a research-first approach,” says Dhir, who outfitted the company’s superstar advisory board with members of the White House’s Human Microbiome Project and lead researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Baylor College of Medicine.

The finished product will be available for order from the company’s website, a month’s supply housed in a handsome apothecary-green jar with an accompanying travel vial shipped right to your door. And it’s only the first of many health contributions on Seed’s horizon. “Things like reinventing infant formula are on our roadmap,” says Katz. “We’re thinking about vaginal health and women’s health, and mother and infant health, too.” With the microbiome, the possibilities are only just making themselves known—and Dhir and Katz are funding their own clinical trials to help encourage development. “I was not looking to start another company,” admits Katz, “but as an entrepreneur, when you can’t find something, you make it.”